132 ploy's natural history. [Book XII. 



cleverest mode of. adulterating it is with Indian myrrh, 5 ® a 

 substance which is gathered from a certain prickly shrub which 

 grows there. This is the only thing that India produces of 

 worse quality than the corresponding produce _ of other coun- 

 tries : they may, however, be very easily distinguished, that 

 of India being so very much inferior. 



CHAP. 36. (17.) MASTICH. 



The transition, therefore, 21 is very easy to mastich, which 

 grows upon another prickly shrub of India and Arabia, known 

 by the name of laina. Of mastich as well there are two dif- 

 ferent kinds ; for in Asia and Greece there is also found a herb 

 which puts forth leaves from the root, and bears a thistly 

 head, resembling an apple, and full of seeds. Upon an inci- 

 sion being made in the upper part of this plant drops distil 

 from it, which can hardly be distinguished from the genuine 

 mastich. There is, again, a third sort, 22 found in Pontus, but 

 more like bitumen than anything else. The most esteemed, 

 however, of all these, is the white mastich of Chios, the price 

 of which is twenty denarii per pound, while the black mastich 

 sells at twelve. It is said that the mastich of Chios exudes 

 from the lentisk in the form of a sort of gum : like frank- 

 incense, it is adulterated with resin. 



CHAP. 37. LADAXTJM AND STOBOLON. 



Arabia, too, still boasts of her ladanum. 23 Many writers 



20 What this was is now unknown. Fee suggests that it may have been 

 bdellium, which is found in considerable quantities in the myrrh that is 

 imported at the present day. 



2i This is most probably the meaning of Pliny's expression—" Ergo 

 transit in mastichen ;" though Hardouin reads it as meaning that myrrh 

 sometimes degenerates to mastich : and Fee, understanding the passage in 

 the same sense, remarks that the statement is purely fabulous. Mastich, 

 he says, is the produce of the Pistacia lentiscus of Linnaeus, which abounds 

 in Greece and the other parts of southern Europe. , The greater part of 

 the mastich of commerce comes from the island of Chio. It is impossible 

 to conjecture to what plant Pliny here alludes, with the head of a thistle. 



23 This kind, Fee says, is quite unknown to the moderns. 



23 This substance is still gathered from the Cistus creticus of Linna?us, 

 which is supposed to be the same as the plant leda, mentioned by Pliny. 

 It is also most probably the same as the Cisthon, mentioned by Pliny in 

 B. xxiv. c. 48. It is very commonly found in Spain. The substance is 

 gathered from off the leaves, not by the aid of goats, but with whips fur- 

 nished with several thongs, with which the shrubs are beaten. There are 

 two sorts of ladanum known in commerce ; the one friable, and mixed with 

 earthy substances, and known as " ladanum in tortis ;" the other black, and 



